McCann FitzGerald: Building out a digital services ecosystem for clients

SmartLaw: Expert insights for the future of law

HighQ was founded in 2001 and we have worked hard to build an exceptional reputation for delivering leading-edge software to some of the world's largest law firms, investment banks and corporations. We are a privately owned business and always strive to provide the best service possible to all of our clients.

Royds Withy King

Using HighQ to enhance services and win new clients.

Summary

Royds Withy King is a progressive full service UK Top 100 law firm. With over 450 staff, including over 60 partners, the firm is known for its expertise in commercial, private client and specialist personal injury and clinical negligence work.

Dave Eagle, Head of IT, explains how the firm uses HighQ Collaborate to enhance their value-added services to clients and secure new client wins.

The challenge: Meeting client requirements to secure a deal

Royds Withy King had a major new client deal that required a secure virtual deal room to be set up, with over 700 documents to be uploaded and indexed on day one.

“We had a large number of deal rooms on another platform but some fundamental functionality was missing,” explains Dave Eagle, Head of IT. “We couldn’t do automated file indexing and the fee-earning teams were spending up to a week building manual indexes to upload for the client,” he said.

This was not ideal as it meant that every time a document was uploaded or moved they would need to re-build those indexes, which was very laborious and time consuming.

“The team working on the new client deal were really worried at the thought of having to manually index 700 documents, which would have taken three people, working full-time, a whole week to do.”

Automating the indexing process was a major driver in the firm looking into other solutions.

The solution: Secure virtual deal rooms with automated file indexing

Royds Withy King heard about HighQ from other firms using the platform and knew that automated indexing was one of the features that HighQ Collaborate offered.

“We needed to be able to set up deal rooms very quickly and we needed a platform that would allow us to securely share files with third parties and control access rights,” said Dave. “We also needed the solution itself to be up and running very quickly, as the client was expecting the deal room set up with all documents uploaded and indexed by the following week.”

Dave worked with HighQ to expedite the sale, deployment and onboarding in record time. The HighQ sales team sent the order form to Royds Withy King on the Wednesday, Dave had it signed off on the Thursday and HighQ were able to deliver the fully branded deal room with all 700 documents uploaded and dynamically indexed by the following Tuesday.

“It was unbelievable that in only four working days we were able to get the HighQ solution up and running which allowed us to meet the client’s expectations, get the deal over the line and really secure that client relationship.” said Dave.

“It was unbelievable that in only four working days we were able to get the HighQ solution up and running which allowed us to meet the client’s expectations, get the deal over the line and really secure that client relationship.”
Dave Eagle, Head of IT

Dave had set up an internal focus group which included one of the partners and key users. All members of the focus group attended the meetings with the various solution providers. This allowed Dave to get immediate feedback from the team and make a decision on their preferred solution very quickly.

All the functionality they required was immediately available with HighQ Collaborate, whereas the other vendors had some functionality on their roadmap or simply didn’t offer it at all.

“Everyone in the user group preferred the HighQ platform, it was really user friendly and offered us all the functionality we required,” said Dave. “I was able to get sign off from the managing partner very quickly on the back of the user group feedback, product functionality and the value that the client relationship held.”

Dave goes on to explain, “The platform is very secure, easy to use and granular which are all brilliant features and then being able to automatically create indexes really made HighQ stand out from the other solutions we looked at.”

Another key requirement was ease of use. One major pain point the firm had with their previous platform was that it was really difficult to move documents around in a deal room. If they wanted to restructure, move documents into a new folder or re-number the documents it was quite a laborious task.

“With HighQ it is just so simple, you just drag and drop the file(s) and the indexes are built on the fly,” said Dave. “It is just so much more intuitive and user friendly and has allowed us to be much more efficient.”

“It is just so much more intuitive and user friendly and has allows us to be much more efficient.”
Dave Eagle, Head of IT

The results: Securing the deal in record time

HighQ took time to really understand Royds Withy King’s particular use case as well as the time constraints they were under and everyone pulled together to make it happen. “It was so refreshing to work with a team that just understood our requirements,” explains Dave. “No one tried to deviate from our requirements to try and sell us additional functionality – it was right, this is what you need, this is your timeline now let’s make this happen.”

“Not all suppliers would do this, sometimes suppliers try to sell you everything upfront or push you down other avenues when you are doing the rollout and there was absolutely none of that from the HighQ team,” said Dave.

Within only four days HighQ and Royds Withy King were able to work together to get a fully branded deal room set up with all the relevant documents uploaded and indexed for their client. “The document upload couldn’t have been simpler, we exported the documents to a zip file and then imported them into the new deal room and HighQ Collaborate built out the index,” said Dave. “The whole process took about 10 minutes.”

Royds Withy King also loves the team functionality which enables the client to view details on all members of the firm working on the deal. This supports the firm’s belief in the importance of building a strong team around the client, transparency and offering their clients a more personal service.

“The whole concept of people being in a deal room and being able to see who is working on their file with a photo and bio just gives that personal touch to the work we are doing,” explains Dave.

“The whole concept of people being in a deal room and being able to see who is working on their file with a photo and bio just gives that personal touch to the work we are doing,”
Dave Eagle, Head of IT

The firm are happy that they will recoup the annual cost of the platform through the value-added services they can offer to clients through these secure virtual deal rooms. “The HighQ solution is really cost-effective and our experience is that clients are happy to invest to get security and peace of mind,” explains Dave.

Going forward, the firm are organising wider system admin training and will launch a full project to migrate all 100 of their existing deal rooms across to the HighQ platform. They are also looking at moving their existing extranet across to the HighQ platform.

“We are keen to move our existing extranet to a more flexible platform like HighQ to give everything a more consistent feel,” explains Dave. “If a client is working with us on a deal room but they are also a retainer client who needs access to items such as our standard HR contracts, it would be great to have a familiar communal area for them to access all of that information with just one login.”

In conclusion

“We had an amazing experience working with the HighQ team,” said Dave. “It was great to work with people who actually understood our needs and worked with us to achieve what we wanted.” Even though the firm had an immediate requirement for HighQ for that one client, they knew that they needed a new platform regardless and can really see the added value that HighQ will bring to the firm. “It really was a no-brainer for us, we particularly needed the technology to get that deal over the line but we can see the added value that this platform can bring and the teams are very excited about the potential,” concludes Dave.

About Royds Withy King

Royds Withy King is a full service UK Top 100 law firm with robust commercial, private client, specialist personal injury and clinical negligence practices. It has the combined expertise of over 450 staff across offices in Bath, London, Oxford and Wiltshire and is a founding member of the international network of independent law firms, Interleges. Royds Withy King uses its experience to put clients ahead of the curve and places client relationships at the core of everything it does. The firm’s experience is renowned, with 37 listings in legal directories as ‘Leaders in their field’. In 2016, the firm achieved eight top tier rankings in The Legal 500, the UK’s leading guide to the law. For the last four years, it has also been a Sunday Times Top 100 Best Mid-Size Company to Work For.

About HighQ

HighQ provides innovative enterprise collaboration and content management solutions to the world’s leading law firms, financial services companies, governments and corporations. The company’s blue chip client base includes over 50% of the global top 100 law firms and some of the largest global financial institutions. HighQ combines secure, enterprise-grade technology with an amazing user experience to transform the way businesses collaborate, communicate and share information securely in the cloud. Founded in 2001, HighQ is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Sydney and Ahmedabad.